The effects of dietary nucleotide supplementation from 9 days of age until the end of post-weaning on piglets hormonal and immune responses and on growth performance were investigated. During lactation (days 9 to 21) and post-weaning (days 22 to 55) 10 [HBI Fomeva11 × (Large White × Landrace)] litters (n ...

Centralised laboratories routinely determine blood types by serological and molecular methods. Current practices have limitations in terms of cost, time and accessibility. Miniaturised microfluidic platforms offer an alternative to conventional genotyping methods, since they consume fewer reagents, provide faster analysis and allow for complete integration and automation. As these 'lab-on-a-chip' ...

Case Description-An 11-year-old spayed female Collie was evaluated because of regurgitation, dysphagia, severe ptyalism, coughing, and weight loss of approximately 12 weeks' duration. Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma had been diagnosed prior to referral on the basis of results of radiographic and endoscopic examination and histologic evaluation of biopsy samples. A ...

Case Description-3 horses were evaluated because of lameness and swelling of the stifle joint subsequent to trauma. Clinical Findings-All horses had characteristic clinical signs of stifle joint pain and effusion. A medial patellar fracture and lateral collateral ligament avulsion fracture were visible ultrasonographically in each. Radiography, including standard as well ...

Objective-To develop, validate, and evaluate a questionnaire (Cats' Assessment Tool for Cardiac Health [CATCH] questionnaire) for assessing health-related quality of life in cats with cardiac disease. Design-Prospective study. Animals-275 cats with cardiac disease. Procedures-The questionnaire was developed on the basis of clinical signs of cardiac disease in cats. A CATCH ...

Objective-To determine the value of serial measurements of peritoneal fluid lactate concentration (PFL) for detecting strangulating intestinal lesions (SLs) in referred horses with signs of colic. Design-Retrospective cohort study. Animals-94 horses with signs of colic. Procedures-Medical records of horses evaluated between September 2006 and February 2010 because of signs of ...

Abdominal cocoon, the idiopathic form of sclerosing encapsulating peritonitis, is a rare condition of unknown etiology that results in an intestinal obstruction due to total or partial encapsulation of the small bowel by a fibrocollagenous membrane. Preoperative diagnosis requires a high index of clinical suspicion. The early clinical features are ...

The prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) depends on tumor extension as well as hepatic function. Hepatic functional reserve is recognized as a factor affecting survival in the treatment of HCC; the Child-Pugh classification system is the most extensively used method for assessing hepatic functional reserve in patients with chronic liver ...

This review discusses the pathophysiology, epidemiology, risk factors, classification, clinical evaluation, and current non-operative and operative treatment of hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids are defined as the symptomatic enlargement and distal displacement of the normal anal cushions. The most common symptom of hemorrhoids is rectal bleeding associated with bowel movement. The abnormal dilatation ...

Human stem cells are scalable cell populations capable of cellular differentiation. This makes them a very attractive in vitro cellular resource and in theory provides unlimited amounts of primary cells. Such an approach has the potential to improve our understanding of human biology and treating disease. In the future it ...

To investigate the anti-oxidative and anti-fibrotic effects of aloe vera in patients with liver fibrosis. Aloe vera high molecular weight fractions (AHM) were processed by patented hyper-dry system in combination of freeze-dry technique with microwave and far infrared-ray radiation. Fifteen healthy volunteers as the control group and 40 patients were ...

To investigate the methylation status of secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine (SPARC) in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and evaluate its clinical implication. The methylation status of SPARC was analyzed in one HCC cell line (SMMC-7721) and 60 pairs of HCC and corresponding nontumorous tissues by methylation-specific polymerase chain ...

To assess the role of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), age, smoking and body weight on the development of intestinal metaplasia of the gastric cardia (IMC). Two hundred and seventeen patients scheduled for esophagogastroduodenoscopy were enrolled in this study. Endoscopic biopsies from the esophagus, gastroesophageal junction and ...

To compare genotype of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) isolated from saliva, dental plaques, gastric biopsy, and stool of each patient in order to evaluate the mode of transmission of H. pylori infection. This cross-sectional descriptive study was performed on 300 antral gastric biopsy, saliva, dental plaque and stool samples which ...

To investigate the association between the tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (TagSNPs) of NOD1 and NOD2 and the risk of developing gastric cancer. We conducted a hospital-based case-control study including 296 incident gastric cancer patients and 160 gastritis controls. Eight TagSNPs in the NOD1 and NOD2 genes were selected from the ...

To determine whether serum levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) correlate with the presence of primary colorectal cancer (CRC), and/or recurrent CRC following radical resection. A total of 413 patients with CRC underwent radical surgery between January 1998 and December 2002 in our department and were enrolled in this study. The ...

To investigate the effect of emodin on pancreatic claudin-5 and occludin expression, and pancreatic paracellular permeability in acute pancreatitis (AP). Experimental pancreatitis was induced by retrograde injection of 5% sodium taurocholate into the biliopancreatic duct. Emodin was injected via the external jugular vein 0 or 6 h after induction of ...

Extranodal natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type, exhibits aggressive tumor behavior and carries a poor prognosis. Recently, lymphomatoid gastropathy with NK/T cell infiltration into gastric mucosa has been recognized as a pseudo-malignant disease which regresses without treatment. Because the conventional immunohistochemical criteria of lymphomatoid gastropathy is similar to that of ...

Small intestinal hemolymphangioma is a very rare benign tumor. There was only one report of a hemolymphangioma of the pancreas invading to the duodenum until March 2011. Here we describe the first case of small intestinal hemolymphangioma with bleeding in a 57-year-old woman. She presented with persistent gastrointestinal bleeding and ...

To develop an affinity peptide that binds to gastric cancer used for the detection of early gastric cancer. A peptide screen was performed by biopanning the PhD-12 phage display library, clearing non-specific binders against tumor-adjacent normal appearing gastric mucosa and obtaining selective binding against freshly harvested gastric cancer tissues. Tumor-targeted ...

Age-related macular degeneration is a major cause of blindness worldwide. With ageing populations in many countries, more than 20% might have the disorder. Advanced age-related macular degeneration, including neovascular age-related macular degeneration (wet) and geographic atrophy (late dry), is associated with substantial, progressive visual impairment. Major risk factors include cigarette ...

Myopia has emerged as a major health issue in east Asia, because of its increasingly high prevalence in the past few decades (now 80-90% in school-leavers), and because of the sight-threatening pathologies associated with high myopia, which now affects 10-20% of those completing secondary schooling in this part of the ...

Corneal transplantation or keratoplasty has developed rapidly in the past 10 years. Penetrating keratoplasty, a procedure consisting of full-thickness replacement of the cornea, has been the dominant procedure for more than half a century, and successfully caters to most causes of corneal blindness. The adoption by specialist surgeons of newer ...

In the first quarter of 2012, publicly traded companies in the cell-based therapy industry continued to show promising overall growth. Highlights included $85 million in new capital investment and steady clinical trial progress.

The subventricular zone (SVZ) neural stem cell niche contains mixed populations of stem cells, transit-amplifying cells, and migrating neuroblasts. Deciphering how endogenous signals, such as hormones, affect the balance between these cell types is essential for understanding the physiology of niche plasticity and homeostasis. We show that Thyroid Hormone (T(3)) and ...

While DNA cytosine methylation is relatively stable in somatic tissues, it is highly dynamic during preimplantation development. A recent study in Nature by Meissner and colleagues (Smith et al., 2012) now reveals dramatic shifts in DNA methylation during the earliest stages of mouse embryogenesis at genome scale and base resolution.

Until recently, aging was viewed as a fixed and irreversible process. However, in this issue of Cell Stem Cell, Florian et al. (2012) reveal a link between increased activity of the RhoGTPase Cdc42, hematopoietic stem cell polarity, and aging that can be regulated by pharmacological inhibition of Cdc42.

Although the prevailing view among geneticists suggests that recombination hotspots exist ubiquitously across the human genome, there is only limited experimental evidence from a few genomic regions to support the generality of this claim. A small number of true recombination hotspots are well supported experimentally, but the vast majority of ...

Two-stage analyses of genome-wide association studies have been proposed as a means to improving power for designs including family-based association and gene-environment interaction testing. In these analyses, all markers are first screened via a statistic that may not be robust to an underlying assumption, and the markers thus selected are ...

Calorie restriction (CR) extends life span and ameliorates age-related pathologies in most species studied, yet the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. Using mouse skeletal muscle as a model, we show that CR acts in part by enhancing the function of tissue-specific stem cells. Even short-term CR significantly enhanced stem ...

The decline in hematopoietic function seen during aging involves a progressive reduction in the immune response and an increased incidence of myeloid malignancy, and has been linked to aging of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). The molecular mechanisms underlying HSC aging remain unclear. Here we demonstrate that elevated activity of the ...

Although distinct human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines can display considerable epigenetic variation, it has been unclear whether such variability impacts their utility for disease modeling. Here, we show that although low-passage female hiPSCs retain the inactive X chromosome of the somatic cell they are derived from, over time ...

Pooling genome-wide association studies (GWASs) increases power but also poses methodological challenges because studies are often heterogeneous. For example, combining GWASs of related but distinct traits can provide promising directions for the discovery of loci with small but common pleiotropic effects. Classical approaches for meta-analysis or pooled analysis, however, might ...

Human populations, along with those of many other species, are thought to have contracted into a number of refuge areas at the height of the last Ice Age. European populations are believed to be, to a large extent, the descendants of the inhabitants of these refugia, and some extant mtDNA ...

Transcriptional heterogeneity within embryonic stem cell (ESC) populations has been suggested as a mechanism by which a seemingly homogeneous cell population can initiate differentiation into an array of different cell types. Chromatin remodeling proteins have been shown to control transcriptional variability in yeast and to be important for mammalian ESC ...